B. Main Topics 1) The Itaewon Crowd Crush on October 29 – Social Disasters and the Duties of the State A) Disaster in Itaewon on October 29 On the night of October 29, 2022, a crowd crush occurred during a Halloween festival in the narrow alleyway on the west-side of the Hamilton Hotel located at 173-7, Itaewon-dong in Seoul. Each year, a large crowd gather for the Halloween festival in Itaewon, and more than 100,000 people gathered for the first Halloween festival since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic without social distancing. The streets of Itaewon are narrow and on an incline, and this cause the people to be packed and pushed downward along the narrow segment. People at the top of the slope fell onto those below.5) This was not an accident caused by an intentional pushing, but people were crushed and killed from crowd gathering and pushing and falling down.6) The street where the disaster occurred is cone-shaped, where the widths of the upper alley and the lower alley are different, and the greatest number of deaths occurred in the middle of the alley. During the accident, 6~10 people were standing in a space of 1m2, and the people at the location received approx. 224~560kg force on average. 158 people died at the scene or after being taken to a hospital, and 1 person committed suicide shortly after due to trauma. The victims were mostly young adults between 10~30, and among the 159 people who were killed, 113 people were Korean and 25 people were foreigners. There were 196 people who were injured immediately after the accident, and 124 additional injuries were reported afterwards.7) Immediately after the accident, the casualties 5) Report on the Outcome of the Special Parliamentary Committee on Investigation into the Itaewon Crowd Crush, Jan. 2023. 6) The KNPA special investigation team concluded that the allegations on specific persons pushing and spraying slippery substance on the floor, and nearby stores locked the door and did not allow people to enter were not directly related to the cause of the accident. According to the outcome of the investigation, as the density of people increased, people were unable to move freely and several people fell during the process. For about 10m from where people began to fall, intense pressure was applied to the people and deaths resulted. The causes of death were suffocation or brain swelling. 7) Joongang Ilbo, Different number of casualties reported by different agencies... 196, 294 and 320, Jan. 20, 2023. 14